Teen drowns at Spotted Eagle

By Elaine Forman

Yellowstone Newspapers

A 15-year-old boy drowned at Spotted Eagle Lake July 14 after attempting to swim to the island, then becoming fatigued, according to a Miles City Fire and Rescue press release.
Numerous agencies re-sponded to help find the boy and try to resuscitate him, but at-tempts were unsuccessful. He was pronounced dead at Holy Rosary Healthcare.
Custer County Sheriff Tony Harbaugh said the victim’s name is Richard Smith of Tren-ton, Utah.
The call of a swimmer in distress at Spotted Eagle came in to 911 at 2:47 p.m. Besides Fire and Rescue, Custer County Sheriff’s Office; Miles City Police Department; Mon-tana Fish, Wildlife and Parks; and Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conser-vation also responded.
The responders performed a coordinated search for the boy.
On Tuesday morning Capt. Brandon Stevens, who was the incident commander at the scene, said the boy was swim-ming with a relative who tried to pull him out but was unable to.
Fire and rescue personnel had borrowed a boat from FWP and used pike poles to find the boy.
He was located at 3:30 p.m. and brought to the shore.
Rescuers on the scene per-formed CPR and advanced life support and transported the boy to the hospital within two minutes of getting him to shore, Stevens said.
“Unfortunately, the patient was unable to be revived and was pronounced dead at Holy Rosary,” a release stated. “This is an unfortunate tragedy for our community. A loss like this will forever be remembered. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family.”
Stevens said Fire and Rescue was very grateful to the other agencies that responded. He said EMT numbers were low at the time because of other ambulance calls.
He added that they did not call Custer County Fire Depart-ment because they were on a grass fire at the time.